Originally Posted by
roulishollandais
Just a word about Venet :
...
Retired AF airline pilot, and former (elected by the members) President of the SNPL the most important pilots Union in France. That does not make him the Devil!
Didn't say it did. However he is not an expert in the field of computing, and the statement showed a lack of understanding of how such a feature is implemented in terms of real-time safety-critical software disciplines.
The issue with the SNPL regarding any action against Airbus is that the union has held a long-standing animosity against the company ever since the A300 went into service as the first long-haul widebody to do away with the Flight Engineer's station. An evolution of design which their members fought tooth-and-nail, and seemingly never forgave.
As such, there will be an understandable suspicion of bias against Airbus in such representations. In Asseline's case, it seems his union-supplied legal representatives steered him in the direction of pursuing claims of technical issues against the aircraft despite a lack of supporting evidence, when he would have been better served by pursuing the airline's poor operations practices which put him in a bad position in the first place, and for which there was significant evidence and potentially a much stronger case when it came to mitigating factors.
I have to say my personal opinion is that all this political nonsense has served only to hinder understanding of the incident and the issues involved, and furthermore has led to a significant number of people developing entrenched opinions that are, in some cases, still held with an almost religious fervour. This in turn means that there's a degree of personal animosity and
ad hominem to the discussion that saddens me immensely.